Optimal launch conditions on the ``no-escape envelope'' (Q912012)

The paper is devoted to a simplified version of the pursuit-evasion differential game describing a duel between a fighter aircraft and an agressive target. For the evader the simplification consists in replacing the game solution by some suboptimal feedback strategy. For the pursuer the problem is to find some parameters of the launch position (direction, altitude). Therefore, the original game formulation is reduced to a finite-dimensional optimization problem. The computations are confined to launch positions on the separating surface between hit and miss, the so- called ``no-escape envelope''. A set of numerical examples is discussed, which leads to some conclusions about the pre-launch guidance of the pursuer.